OMD & Rebel Use AR To Create Immersive Basketball Experience

OMD and rebel have partnered with Unbound to create a gamified social augmented reality experience for basketball, allowing fans to meet on a virtual court during the 2023 NBL season through social AR filters built on the Meta platform, Spark AR.

The idea was developed via OMD’s specialist partnerships, content and social division, OMD Create, who were challenged by rebel to increase awareness of their performance footwear range in an innovative way, while supporting their ambition as ‘the home of basketball’.

The filter provides an immersive basketball court environment allowing users to project their face onto a basketball player’s body and challenging them to match facial expressions to timed on-screen prompts. Each user is presented with a unique gamified experience based on their footwear choice, which relates to the level of difficulty and speed of the game. Users can choose from the latest of rebel’s signature basketball shoe ranges, including Nike Kyrie Infinity and Air Jordan XXXVI to play in.

To immerse in the deeply rich subculture of basketball, OMD has worked closely with contextual partners ScreenSports and Sporting News to promote the filter to basketball fans through authentic and organic channels. The experience is also supported with media activity across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

Rosemary Martin, general manager eCommerce and marketing at rebel, said; “This innovative idea presented by OMD allows us to connect with our customers who are heavy users of TikTok and Instagram. The competitive nature of the filter and game will entice customers to keep playing and share it with their friends. This work continues our ambition to cement rebel as ‘the home of basketball’ in Australia. Our new campaign focuses on highlighting the latest signature ranges worn by the super athletes of the NBA. We know our ‘Hooper’ customers are obsessed with all things NBA and want to emulate their heroes in what they wear.”

Thomas Hutley, managing director, OMG Content, added; “This AR filter is a great display of OMD Create’s ambition to always challenge convention and think outside the box, pushing the boundaries of innovation and creative thinking. The growth of AR in social has been phenomenal, offering brands the opportunity to engage and connect with their audiences on a deeper level with gamification at its core. We’re excited about the potential in this space and confident this experience will be a huge hit with basketball fans.”

Josh Parisi, creative lead at Unbound, says; “Gamified filters are an increasingly popular way to drive organic reach on social. The rebel All-Stars game we’ve created really pushes the limits of what AR filters can do – multiple levels, avatar shoe configurations, dynamic scoring and a full 3D basketball court – all within the tiny 4mb file size limitation.

With limited time to grab attention, we focused heavily on an intuitive UX and clean UI, letting users figure out the game as they play to improve their score. It’s resulted in a highly addictive little mini-game, and we hope basketball fans get a good kick out of it.”

Phil Bonnano, client partner, Meta ANZ, says; “We are excited that our partners like rebel and OMD Create are pushing and delivering outstanding customer experiences using tools like Meta’s Spark AR. The campaign reaches basketball fans all over Instagram, and I think is an absolute slam dunk.”

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